Travel Guides

Villages on Stilts

Excursions

Most tuk-tuk and moto drivers in Siem Reap will be only too
happy to take you on a tour of one of the area's famous 'villages
on stilts'. The houses lining Tonle Sap Lake are built on ten foot
(3m) poles, so that when the water rises, as it does every year
during the monsoon, the homes are not flooded or washed away. The
closest floating village is situated in Chong Khneas, just an
hour's drive from Siem Reap, though there are a number of these
floating villages located along the Tonle Sap Lake should you wish
to make a real trip out of it. Villages closer to Siem Reap tend to
be touristy, while those further away are far more picturesque. A
two-hour boat trip through Chong Kneas village costs about $6 per
person or around $20 for a boatload. Although during the wet season
the stilted homes come into their own from a practical point of
view the villages are most visually spectacular during the dry
season, when their long stilts rise up eerily out of the mud or
shallow water. Be aware that there have been tourist scams in the
villages and that the poverty witnessed can be disturbing.